As to assemblies, synods, or national councils, they indisputably cannot be convoked except when the sovereign or State deems them necessary. The commissioners of the latter ought therefore to preside, direct all their deliberations, and give their sanction to the decrees.
There may exist periodical assemblies of the clergy, to maintain order, under the authority of the State, but the civil power ought uniformly to direct their views and guide their deliberations. The periodical assembly of the clergy of France is only an assembly of regulative commissioners for all the clergy of the kingdom.
The vows by which certain ecclesiastics oblige themselves to live in a body according to certain rules, under the name of monks, or of religieux, so prodigiously multiplied in Europe, should always be submitted to the inspection and approval of the magistrate. These convents, which shut up so many persons who are useless to society, and so many victims who regret the liberty which they have lost; these orders, which bear so many strange denominations, ought not to be valid or obligatory, unless when examined and sanctioned by the sovereign or the State.
At all times, therefore, the prince or State has a right to take cognizance of the rules and conduct of these religious houses, and to reform or abolish them if held to be incompatible with present circumstances, and the positive welfare of society.
The revenue and property of these religious bodies are, in like manner, open to the inspection of the magistracy, in order to judge of their amount and of the manner in which they are employed. If the mass of the riches, which is thus prevented from circulation, be too great; if the revenues greatly exceed the reasonable support of the regulars; if the employment of these revenues be opposed to the general good; if this accumulation impoverish the rest of the community; in all these cases it becomes the magistracy, as the common fathers of the country, to diminish and divide these riches, in order to make them partake of the circulation, which is the life of the body politic; or even to employ them in any other way for the benefit of the public.
Agreeably to the same principles, the sovereign authority ought to forbid any religious order from having a superior who is a native or resident of another country. It approaches to the crime of lèse-majesté.
The sovereign may prescribe rules for admission into these orders; he may, according to ancient usage, fix an age, and hinder taking vows, except by the express consent of the magistracy in each instance. Every citizen is born a subject of the State, and has no right to break his natural engagements with society without the consent of those who preside over it.
If the sovereign abolishes a religious order, the vows cease to be binding. The first vow is that to the State; it is a primary and tacit oath authorized by God; a vow according to the decrees of Providence; a vow unalterable and imprescriptible, which unites man in society to his country and his sovereign. If we take a posterior vow, the primitive one still exists; and when they clash, nothing can weaken or suspend the force of the primary engagement. If, therefore, the sovereign declares this last vow, which is only conditional and dependent on the first, incompatible with it, he does not dissolve a vow, but decrees it to be necessarily void, and replaces the individual in his natural state.
The foregoing is quite sufficient to dissipate all the sophistry by which the canonists have sought to embarrass a question so simple in the estimation of all who are disposed to listen to reason.